I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but we live in the digital age. *Sigh* it makes cringe so much any time I hear anyone say that. It’s true though, we do live in a time of tech. And, unfortunately, the majority of people aren’t using it efficiently – especially college students. So let me show you some of my favorite apps to make the life of a college student easier than pie.

1| Grade Tracker Pro

The one thing that continuously perplexes me in college is that they don’t have a program that calculates your grades for you. Well, at least they don’t have it on my campus and it drives me absolutely insane. And because they don’t give it to us, so many people don’t know their grade until finals rolls around and that causes me great amounts of anxiety. But, I’ve found the solution.

Grade Tracker Pro incredible because it keeps track of your grade for you and your GPA, both for the semester and cumulatively. I love it so much because it’s super simple to use. You create different courses within each new semester, then you create the categories (homework, projects, midterms, etc.) for the individual courses. In those categories you can either input the percentages that your professor gives you in the syllabus or the number of points within each category. Then all you have to do is put in the grade that you received for an assignment under the correct category and it’ll give you your grade.

Super simple, no hassle and you always know your grade in the class. It’s definitely saved my life during weeks when I needed to figure out whether or not doing one homework assignment over another was going to do terrible things to my grade. Out of all the apps, Grade Tracker Pro is easily my favorite.

2| GroupMe

I hadn’t heard of this app before college but I kinda wish I had. I’m not really a fan of having to give my phone number out to people – something I fully blame on my dad. Fortunately, with group me I don’t really have to worry about it.

It’s basically like group texts only no one has your actual number. More importantly, you can kick people out of the chat or you can remove yourself when you’re no longer interested. There are some other cool features in this lovely little app but those are my favorite two. If you’re not using it, I highly recommend it.

3| Stitcher

If you like podcasts, this is definitely the app for you. Sometimes when I’m walking to class and don’t have to cross any streets (‘cause I don’t wanna die) I listen to podcasts. Stitcher has a crap ton of really interesting podcasts to listen to and they give really amazing recommendations too.

I’m particularly fond of Freakonomics Radio and Millennial. Some of the pretty interesting recommendations I’ve gotten are Car Talk and How To Do Everything both of which are surprisingly good.

4| Flipboard

Need to keep up with the headlines in any industry? Flipboard is the app that’s calling your name.

What’s awesome about this app is you can choose which industries you get information about. So, I’m getting stuff from News, Science, Travel, and Books. Naturally, News is the first because politics and I check that while I’m brushing my teeth. Everything else I check throughout the day alongside politics so I always feel like I can have a conversation about almost anything. It’s a great feeling.

5| Merged! and 1010!

I’m not really interested in having games on my phone but these two are pretty good.

They’re both essentially like a more relaxed version of Tetris. 1010! Is most similar to Tetris but there isn’t a time limit and instead the goal is to remove as many lines on the 10 by 10 board as possible. The more you remove, the longer they game lasts and the more points you get. Basically, you’re playing to beat yourself. My favorite type of game.

Merged is pretty similar but there are more colors involved. There are little squares that look like dice and they have different colors. Three dice of the same number (or same color, depending on what you’re looking at) that are touching become the next number up. After six, an ‘M’ for merged is made and three ‘M’s become a tiny bomb that clears part of the board. Again, really relaxed and the goal is to beat yourself.

These are by far my two favorite game apps. Really, any game that involves me trying to beat myself is a good thing. And every college student needs to take a breather sometimes and these are the games to do it.

6| Wattpad

In case you didn’t know – my absolute favorite thing in the world is reading. And I’ll read just about anything which is why I love this app.

Wattpad is a giant community of mostly unpublished authors trying to get their foot in the door of writing and/or publishing. The beauty of this community is that there are some really amazing gems out there, you just have to dig a little to find them. And just about every genre is represented here so you can usually find something that you’re interested in.

Most importantly, it’s free. So yes, they might not be books you can put on Goodreads or anything like that, but there are some that should definitely be considered novels. It might take a little bit to find the good ones, but they are there. And every college student needs to spend some time doing some free reading, it’s a great way to relax a little.

Well those are my favorite of the apps. You should give them a try and tell me which you like.